Modern Classics Penguin Essays of George Orwell (Penguin Modern Classics) - Softcover

Orwell, George

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141183063 ISBN 13: 9780141183060

Publisher: Penguin Classic, 2000

Synopsis

The articles collected in George Orwell's Essays illuminate the life and work of one of the most individual writers of this century - a man who elevated political writing to an art. This outstanding collection brings together Orwell's longer, major essays and a fine selection of shorter pieces that includes 'My Country Right or Left', 'Decline of the English Murder', 'Shooting an Elephant' and 'A Hanging'. With great originality and wit Orwell unfolds his views on subjects ranging from a revaluation of Charles Dickens to the nature of Socialism, from a comic yet profound discussion of naughty seaside postcards to a spirited defence of English cooking. Displaying an almost unrivalled mastery of English plain prose, Orwell's essays created a unique literary manner from the process of thinking aloud and continue to challenge, move and entertain. This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Bernard Crick.

About this title

About the Author:

Eric Arthur Blair (1903-1950), better known by his pen-name, George Orwell, was born in India, where his father worked for the Civil Service. An author and journalist, Orwell was one of the most prominent and influential figures in twentieth-century literature. His unique political allegory Animal Farm was published in 1945, and it was this novel, together with the dystopia of Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), which brought him world-wide fame. His novels and non-fiction include Burmese Days, Down and Out in Paris and London, The Road to Wigan Pier and Homage to Catalonia.

Review:

"Orwell is the most influential political writer of the twentieth century...He gives us a gritty, personal example of how to engage as a writer in politics." -"New York Review of Books " "[Orwell] evolved, in his seemingly offhand way, the clearest and most compelling English prose style this century...But of course he was more than just a great writer. We need him today because [of] his passion for the truth." -"The Sunday Times "(London) "Had Orwell lived to a full term, he might well have gone on to become the greatest modern literary critic in the language. But he lived more than long enough to make writing about politics a branch of the humanities, setting a standard of civilized response to the intractably complex texture of life." -"The New Yorker" "The real reason we read Orwell is because his own fault-line, his fundamental schism, his hybridity, left him exceptionally sensitive to the fissure-which is everywhere apparent-between what ought to be the casep

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classic
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0141183063
• ISBN 13: 9780141183060
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 496